Indonesia has long been one of Australia’s most important strategic partners, and the relationship has become closer – if occasionally fraught – under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Following legislative and presidential elections earlier this year, Indonesia faces a new future under president-elect, Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

Indonesian writer, journalist and Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono and award-winning journalist Hamish McDonald, author of the recently published book Demokrasi: Indonesia in the 21st Century will be in conversation with Vannessa Hearman from the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney, to discuss human rights and democracy in Indonesia, the Jokowi administration and what lies ahead for Indonesia. Honorary Associate Professor David Reeve, UNSW will launch Demokrasi: Indonesia in the 21st Century by Hamish McDonald .

Andreas Harsono is based in Jakarta. Before joining Human Rights Watch, he helped found the Jakarta-based Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information in 1995, and in 2003 he helped create the Pantau Foundation, a journalist training organization also based in Jakarta. A staunch backer of the free press, Harsono also helped establish Jakarta’s Alliance of Independent Journalists and Bangkok’s South East Asia Press Alliance.

Hamish MacDonald is an award-winning Asia Pacific journalist and part time scholar. He graduated with a BA from Sydney University, majoring in Government and spent 1978-79 as an Honorary Fellow in the former Department of Indonesian and Malay studies while writing Suharto's Indonesia (1981). He was Foreign Editor and Asia-Pacific Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald until 2013 and is the author of several other books, including Mahabharata in Polyester (2010) about India's most famous and controversial business family, the Ambanis, and, with Desmond Ball, Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra (2000), which gave the definitive account of the military, bureaucratic and intelligence manoevres around the killing of five Australian newsmen. Currently he is a Visiting Fellow/Journalist in Residence, College of Asia & the Pacific, Australian National University, and world editor for The Saturday Paper.